Hyderabad: The city on Wednesday while being locked up in homes and living the same day everyday, experienced something new that came as an excitement in the otherwise mundane day. Hyderabadis woke up to a rare phenomenon of hallow ring around the sun that left everyone surprised.
From people at their homes to the ones walking on road, everyone tried to witness this warmth from the sky. Nobody wanted to miss having a glimpse of this rare sight and tried to capture this on their phones.
What is Sun Halo?
The halo that appeared around the Sun is a ring that appears due to the dispersion of light as white light passes through ice crystals found in upper-level cirrus clouds, causing the halo to have colours. According to the University of Illinois, “The halo is a ring of light 22-degrees from the Sun or Moon and is the most common type of halo observed and formed by hexagonal ice crystals.”
The clouds contain millions of tiny ice crystals, which refract, split and even reflect the light to give an impression of a circular rainbow ring. The crystals have to be oriented and positioned just so with respect to your eye, in order for the halo to appear.
A few days ago, the same phenomenon was witnessed in Bengaluru as well. In a 22-degree halo, the kind seen in Bengaluru, light enters from one side of the ice crystal and exits through another, being refracted on both entry and exit. The two refractions bend the light by 22-degrees from its original point, producing a ring of light around the Sun or the Moon.
Seen around the Moon, lunar halos are mostly colourless as moonlight is not very bright. However, in the case of the Sun, these colours are more noticeable and appear as bright as a rainbow.